- US Senate panel considers vote to shield special education from RFK Jr.’s agency
Source: USA Today
“A Senate committee is considering a vote in July to prevent the Trump administration from transferring core functions of federal special education programs to the Health and Human Services Department, which is overseen by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The move – one of the most dramatic changes in President Donald Trump’s yearlong crusade to dismantle the Education Department – immediately set off alarm among disability rights groups, who fear it could eventually disrupt services for students with disabilities. Critics pointed to RFK Jr.’s pattern of controversial past statements about autism in particular (he said during a press conference last year that the condition ‘destroys families’). Though federal officials have not yet provided a clear timeline for the bold shift – even in internal communications to employees – they’ve promised that students’ rights will continue to be protected.” (06/20/26)
- UN warns of atrocities in Sudan as RSF advances on El-Obeid
Source: Yahoo! News
“Members of the UN Security Council on Saturday warned of possible atrocities and a worsening humanitarian crisis in Sudan as the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) advance towards the city of El-Obeid in Kordofan state. The council called on the RSF not to launch an attack on the city, which lies in a strategic area linking central and western Sudan. The warning came days after UN Secretary General António Guterres urged the international community to press Sudan’s warring parties to avoid further bloodshed. He warned against a repeat of atrocities reported during the RSF’s capture of Al-Fashir in the Darfur region late last year. According to the UN human rights office, more than 6,000 people were killed in the city over three days.” (06/21/26)
https://www.yahoo.com/news/world/articles/un-warns-atrocities-sudan-rsf-052620470.html
- “Public Services”: The Longest Con
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp“‘The state,’ 19th century French economist Frédéric Bastiat wrote, ‘is the great fiction by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.’ Many, maybe even most, people seem to believe that without government we not only wouldn’t, but couldn’t, have things like roads, schools, mail delivery, and electricity. And yet all those things existed long before any of the governments that provide them today existed, and in some cases long before political government itself, as we understand it, existed.” (06/21/26)
- Donald Trump, Champion of Renewable Energy
Source: Paul Krugman
by Paul Krugman“On Wednesday the Interior Department announced that it would pay the energy developer Invenergy $765 million not to develop three offshore wind farms. This is the third such payment by the Trump administration to undo offshore wind projects that have been years in the planning. Trump has so far committed $2.5 billion in taxpayer dollars to killing renewable energy projects. … Yet here’s the irony: Donald Trump’s disastrous Iran war has delivered a huge boost for renewable energy around the world — except in the U.S.. Trump has so far done more to shift the global economy away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy than any other single individual in history.” (06/19/26)
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/donald-trump-champion-of-renewable
- We’re Always Just One New Tax Away From Utopia
Source: Independent Institute
by Scott Beyer“With Elon Musk’s ascent to trillionaire status following last Friday’s SpaceX IPO, progressive politicians are once again calling for a wealth tax. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and more argue that taxing immense fortunes would provide the revenue needed to fund everything from universal childcare to expanded healthcare and housing programs. Listening to them, one gets the impression that society is perpetually just one new tax away from solving its big problems. That’s fantastical thinking. The wealth tax is often presented as an obvious way to fund government programs—basically free money. Yet its proponents rarely grapple with two realities. First, the tax may be practically unworkable. Second, even if it could be implemented, the revenue would not solve the problems these politicians identify, and may even worsen them. These are separate questions, and both deserve examination.” (06/20/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/06/20/always-a-tax-away-from-utopia/
- AI Doomsday Warnings Distract from More Imminent AI Concerns
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Daniel Nuccio“AI is everywhere. It’s getting incorporated into everything. That’s simply progress, we’re told. And therefore we need to embrace it, lest we look like a Luddite and let China win (whatever that means). Yet, simultaneously, a lot of people also are afraid because of AI. Very afraid. And sometimes, we’re told that we should be afraid too. However, in public discourse surrounding AI, there often can be a lack of detail regarding what specifically we’re supposed to be afraid of. Sometimes it is not even clear what is meant by the term ‘AI.’ … these more hyperbolic, sci-fi depictions of the threat(s) posed by AI tend to get more attention than, and consequently distract from, more realistic and more imminent threats pertaining to privacy, freedom, autonomy, and even just a way of life many of us have come to enjoy.” (06/19/26)
https://brownstone.org/articles/ai-doomsday-warnings-distract-from-more-imminent-ai-concerns/
- It’s a great time to be a socialist. Until reality sets in.
Source: Washington Post
by Megan McArdle“It has never been a better time in America to be a socialist. We aging Gen Xers who thought that socialism had been decisively refuted by the fall of the Berlin Wall have been refuted ourselves: Democratic socialists now run Seattle and New York City, and come January, probably D.C. too, where Janeese Lewis George won the Democratic primary that generally decides the district’s mayoral elections. … The challenge is that socialism’s rise is spiky, concentrated in blue cities where affluent (but often downwardly mobile) college graduates cluster. That’s a problem for the Democratic Party, where the excesses of progressive governance are helping to make the party’s brand toxic in the less true-blue areas. But it’s also a challenge for the socialists, because cities are the hardest place to execute big plans for new taxing and spending.” (06/21/26)
- The Mind and Brilliance of Alexis de Tocqueville, Part One
Source: Town Hall
by Mark Lewis“Most of you have heard of Alexis de Tocqueville, the Frenchman who visited America in the 1830s and wrote a two-volume classic, Democracy in America, about his findings. De Tocqueville was an incredibly brilliant man, and I’d like to share with readers a little of his genius. Like our Founding Fathers, he had a solid grasp of history, human nature, and great, eternal spiritual truths. Here are a few of his thoughts: 1. ‘The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.’ … I find it interesting that he said that Congress would bribe the people with their own money. The man was honest. … 2. ‘I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run.'” (06/21/26)
- Queers are Everywhere You Bomb
Source: exile in happy valley
by Nicky Reid“It is a sad and disturbing fact that the white supremacist cis hetero chauvinists behind the mirage factory that is Atlantic neoliberalism have adopted the notion of ‘LGBTQ rights’ as one of their many excuses for flattening the planet and turning it into a colossal beige fulfillment center at the service of the global 1%. But this must be seen for what it truly is; fickle, empty and totally deceptive propaganda.” (06/20/26)
https://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/2026/06/queers-are-everywhere-you-bomb.html
- Power of judges expanding, not being curbed
Source: The Price of Liberty
by Nathan Barton“This week, a federal judge in Montana cancelled oil and gas leases on 1.5 MILLION acres of land in the State of Wyoming (a different district). And more acres in Montana and the Dakotas. … The State of Wyoming alone will lose $330 million in royalties and fees – not counting the taxes paid by the people who work getting and transporting the natural gas, and the taxes as the money circulates through the local economies. Now, as lovers of liberty, we are of mixed feelings about the bureaucrats and politicos down in Cheyenne (or Helena, or Bismarck and Pierre) getting less money. But it is the people that won’t get paid because that oil and gas will stay in the ground, instead of fueling the economy, that really take it in the shorts. … So why did this judge do this? Including going outside his district? Bluntly, because the guy is in bed with the environists.” (06/20/26)
https://thepriceofliberty.org/2026/06/20/power-of-judges-expanding-not-being-curbed/
- Fatalities From Israel’s Vast Gaza Genocide Deliberately Undercounted
Source: Common Dreams
by Ralph Nader“The mainstream media has no problem guesstimating the deaths (500,000) from the Assad Dictatorship’s Civil War in Syria, nor the estimated deaths in the wars in Ukraine, Sudan, or Iran. Somehow, media editors do not let their investigative reporters assess the extent of Israel’s mass murder of civilians in Gaza, an exposed, defenseless population of 2.3 million people in an enclave the geographic size of Pennsylvania. … Why? One reason is that the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health certifies deaths in Gaza based on reports from hospitals and morgues that were mostly blown up well over a year ago. (They report presently around 73,000 fatalities.) But Hamas has admitted that there are tens of thousands of bodies under the rubble, thousands more blown into bits or incinerated and unidentifiable.” (06/20/26)
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/gaza-genocide-death-toll-undercount
- Fossils
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman“Back when I was a college student, a very long time ago, coat and tie were required wear in the dining hall. I kept a rolled up tie in my pocket, to be worn for meals and only for meals, have rarely worn one since. Part of the reason may have been that my sport at the time was judo, where choke holds are legal. Neckties are an obsolete technology. Their purpose was to seal the shirt at the neck to help keep the wearer warm in unheated rooms. They have been made obsolete twice, first by central heating and a second time by elastic. They are still worn, although less often than when I was young. Neckties are a fossil. There are others.” (06/19/26)
- Unattended Baggage, episode 345
Source: Unattended Baggage
“Peace. War. Strait Open. Strait Closed.” (06/20/26)
https://unattendedbaggage.substack.com/p/episode-345-peace-war-strait-open
- The Good Fight, 06/20/26
Source: Yascha Mounk
“A Debate with Curtis Yarvin.” (06/20/26)
https://writing.yaschamounk.com/p/a-debate-with-curtis-yarvin
- The Fifth Column, episode 562
Source: The Fifth Column
“The Iran Deal Is Bad and Everyone Is Stupid.” (06/19/26)
https://www.wethefifth.com/p/the-iran-deal-is-bad-and-everyone